Computer Simulation of a Virus

Small Yet Significant: First-ever Simulation of Entire Life Form. ‘When Boeing and Airbus developed their latest aircraft, the companie’s engineers designed and tested them on a computer long before the planes were built. Biologists are catching on. They’ve just completed the first computer simulation of an entire life form: a virus. Deeper understanding of the mechanistic properties of viruses, the researchers say, could not only contribute to improvements in public health, but also in the creation of artificial nanomachines made of capsids: a small protein shell that contains a viral building plan, a genome, in the form of DNA or RNA.’